The Grave
by Koichama
Summary: Kurogane reflects on the subject of fatherhood. First installment of "August Anthology" series. Pairings: Mentioned Kurofai. Warnings: Spoilers for the end of TRC.


**Author Note: **This story is the beginning of a collection of stories that I have dubbed the "August Anthology." Each day of August, I plan to write one character-based story as a way to help me out of my writer's slump. I finished my Aug. 1st installment twenty minutes past midnight, and posted it late. However, I plan to keep up with the rest of my schedule, and write one story for each day.

**Thanks: **Special thanks and a million glomps go to **Zelinxia**, who encouraged this suicidal mission. She also gave great feedback and helped with the particulars of this fic.

**Prompt:** "It must be difficult to be a parent."

**Warnings: **Spoilers, angst, denial, and lack of funnies.

* * *

It must be difficult to be a parent. Kurogane would not know that though. He never before thought of parenthood as it applied to himself. After the destruction of Suwa, he imagined he would continue his bloodline, but he still never imagined raising a child himself. In his mind, the next generation popped up as fully-grown warriors, much like himself. The metamorphosis from baby to child to adult was not such a hard concept to grasp. However, his metamorphosis from warrior to husband to father was a much harder concept. Courtship was another requirement for carrying on his bloodline. At least, he imagined a woman would want to be courted before marriage. A wife – the idea neither appealed to him nor repelled him. As he thought about it, he never could approach the idea as though he was an active participant. That was because he could never be like his own caring father. He could not be anyone's father.

He was not a father. He stubbornly grasped that small bit of denial as though it was the only raft left in a wide sea. When he last saw the kids, last saw their sad eyes as the universe erased their smiles forever, he sunk. It was like soaring and then plunging straight into the ocean depths, actually. The kids he cared about, mentored and protected, rose above him and lived proud lives to the bitter end. That was a thought worthy of his own father.

He stood at his father's grave the day after he visited his home, the magician by his side - at least his prediction about never being able to court a woman was correct. Fate threw Fai in his path, and he gave his left arm to keep him there. Still, it was surreal, standing by his father's grave, both as a son and a father at heart and not being able to offer his children the same respect. They did not even die. They were just lost from this and every other world. Why he remembered the pain of loss, he did not know. Why the empty spot besides his parents' grave clenched his heart, he knew in more ways than he could say.

"I am sure we are missed Kuro-sama," spoke the mage lightly. He looked at the spot next to their graves as well. His voice hitched with the word, 'missed,' but he smiled, and Kurogane found himself capable of smiling back.

"Amaterasu with lecture me if I make the princess wait," he replied, "Besides, I am sure the kid and manjuu are eager to leave."

"Daddy is also eager," Fai teased as they walked away. He huffed and swelled his chest at the same time. The mage was aggravatingly and persistently wrong. Kurogane just knew better than to argue with him by now.

He really was not the kids' father, not by biology and not by admittance. At times, he was their guardian. At times, he was a mentor. Sometimes he had felt a swell of pride with the kids' accomplishments. He had felt abandonment with their absence. They were his to protect and his personal pride. That was all. Whatever missing piece was needed to complete the picture of a father, he did not have it. They were babies once, he thought, but he did not remember them. Their first steps were taken without him. They were only two butterflies who flapped their wings miles away. At that time, he was only a warrior who did not care for the fates of two unrelated children no more than he cared for the families of the soldiers he had slain. Regardless, they had crossed his path and their existence was important to him.

Time had forgotten the two children, but he did not forget that he owed them both a solid whack on the head, and that promise superseded all of the universe's staple time paradoxes. The continuum could not take that away from him, not that promise. Soon, the manjuu bun and the kid will call them to travel to a different world to look for what was lost. Soon the kids will feel the justice of his fist against their stupid self-sacrificing noggins.


End file.
